Some random barely-edited thoughts on my experience with weight loss:
In the midst of a diet where I will lose 15 lbs (15.9lb, from 185.8 lb to 169.9, to be exact) in 40 days.
I have 95% certainty I will reach this goal in the appointed time. Even if I don’t reach exactly 169.9lb, I’ll be close, so whether or not I hit the exact number is arbitrary for my purposes. (I’m losing some weight to see if it helps a lingering back injury.)
I’m just eating a disciplined diet and working out according to a consistent schedule.
My diet is simple and not starvation-y at all. Most people wouldn’t do it because it’s repetitive (I literally eat the same thing nearly everyday so I can know my calorie intake without any counting.)
My workout isn’t hard but most people wouldn’t do it because...I don’t know why, it’s just my experience that people won’t. It’s 4-5 days per week of 30-60 minutes cardio and 30-60 minutes of weight training. I have a back injury that’s limiting me, so it’s nothing terribly rigorous.
...
In my years at health clubs, talking to health-club-going people, I’ve seen all the evidence I’ll ever need to believe, basically, the Calories In / Calories Out model of weight loss is correct.
My opinion of the rationality community’s view of weight loss is that it’s bad. In fact, it is what I would consider anti-advice—the sort of thing you would introduce someone to if you wanted them to fail at weight loss. (Like in Mean Girls when Lindsey Lohan gives Rachel McAdams Swedish weight-gaining bars and tells her they are for weight loss.)
...
Some of my rough and random thoughts on managing weight:
Lean muscle mass is responsible for ~65% of individual differences in BMR.
People have significant differences in metabolism that are probably genetic predispositions. These differences can mean people who behave identically (same diet and exercise routine) will end up with very different weights.
No one should be shamed for their weight anymore than someone should be shamed for their height. (This is obvious, but needs to be said ’cuz “fat shaming” is an applause light used by the crowd who thinks anything resembling a simple CICO model for weight loss is bad and cruel.)
You shouldn’t necessarily care about weight loss and our culture is fucked up for making people feel bad about their weight.
Losing weight can be really hard.
Diet is a central component to our lives, and changes in diet make people emotional, tired, etc.
Weight is a very personal issue and body image’s importance in our culture, for better or worse, can not be overstated.
Exercising is a hard habit to adopt.
People lie. Self-reporting of diet and exercise is full of inaccuracies.
Changing your diet and exercise routine is akin to changing other habits and is subject to the same sorts of difficulties and failure modes.
The first 2-5 weeks of big diet changes are fucking hard, but it gets easier like any habit change.
Atkins, and other low carb diets, work because ’Murican diets are high calorie AND carb-centric. Cutting all carbs for a while means also cutting your total calories significantly. The published woo reasons why they work are mostly bullshit. It’s just calorie cutting while giving you a shot at forming different long-term diet habits.
There may be some foods that speed metabolism, some foods that are good to eat at certain times during the day, some food that satiate more than others for any given person, etc...
But the Eat Less/Exercise More model is tried and true.
the Calories In / Calories Out model of weight loss is correct
My opinion is that it is a “motte-and-bailey” type of a model. Technically correct, but skips some of the important parts.
Things you can control directly:
amount and type of food you put in your mouth
type and amount of exercise you choose to do
whether you really start doing the exercise each day, and keep doing it as long as possible
Things you cannot control directly:
what your metabolism actually does with the food you put in your mouth
Things this model doesn’t even mention:
there are other important things about the food, not just calories
As a consequense, these things happen in real life that the model does not predict:
If you are lucky, you can actually put a lot of calories in your mouth without getting fat as a result, even if you are not exercising hard. Not sure what exactly happens, my uneducated guess is that the metabolism only takes as much calories as needed, as the rest goes to shit. (So yes, technically it is “calories out”, but it is not what people proposing this model typically mean, and you have no direct control over this, i.e. you can’t simply decide to lose weight by going to the bathroom more often.)
If you are unlucky, the “calories in” get converted into something that is somehow not easily accessible as an energy source. (Either because your metabolism is fucked up generally, or because your body is low on some important component, such as iron.) You know you should burn some calories, but at the same time you are weak as a fly, so you really can’t. (Not because “math doesn’t work”, but because the linear model ignores some parts of the reality.) But you mentioned this in the “random thoughts” part.
...however, assuming that the metabolism is working more or less correctly, the model is useful.
My recommendation would be: Step 1 -- get checked by a doctor, whether you are low on something; start taking supplements; Step 2 -- start exercising regularly, without worrying about the “calories in” yet, just to build the momentum; Step 3 -- get more strategic about the food you eat.
The reason I put “step 2” before “step 3″ is because studing calories can take unlimited amounts of time, and can be used as a convenient excuse to procrastinate on exercising. I would also say that “add a lot of unprocessed vegetables in your food” is a good first approximation for healthy diet.
Other random thoughts:
don’t focus too much on “weight”—it correlates with the right thing, but is not exactly the right thing; converting 5 kg of fat into 5 kg of muscles increases your health and attractivity even if the resulting weight is the same, on the other hand dehydrating yourself decreases your weight but hurts your health;
shaming people for their metabolism (or just not having time to exercise because they e.g. have to work 2 jobs to survive) is bad; but enforcing a norm of tabooing information about healthy lifestyle is in my eyes even worse… essentially, because people doing the former are at least usually recognized as assholes, while people doing the latter can pretend noble intentions while in fact they contribute to avoidable premature deaths;
I believe that “eating a lot of unprocessed vegetables” is the essence of healthy diet, and the rest is mostly role-playing (i.e. you can eat “Mediterranean diet” and imagine being an exotic Italian, or eat a “paleo diet” and imagine being a prehistorical warrior, but the outcome is the same for the same reasons, regardless of your aesthetical preferences)
I mentioned the nutrition because that used to be my problem in the past.
I had low level of iron, so the answer “just exercise and burn some calories” was quite useless to me—I was barely able to wake up in the morning. Repeatedly I tried to exercise regularly for a few weeks, but the outcome was always pathetic: after a few moves I was exhausted, and there was no visible long-term progress. Of course, after doing a difficult thing with zero benefits, after a few weeks my motivation was gone.
Meta problem was that “checking my levels of iron” wasn’t even on the list of things I was thinking about, when I was thinking about how to get rid of some fat. (People around me assumed the opposite causal model: I have a problem with energy, because I am not doing any sport or exercise, duh!) It happened quite randomly; a friend of mine was reading somewhere on internet a list of symptoms of iron deficiency and mentioned it to me, and I was like “huh, sometimes I have similar symptoms, too”. Yet it took a few years until once I asked a doctor to measure my iron level. Turned out, it was at the lowest end of the “healthy” interval… so, according to the doctor, not worth mentioning unless I ask explicitly, because I am still technically healthy. I guess being technically healthy is important from the official medicine point of view, but I would rather get closer towards the optimal health, so… I bought some iron supplements, and...
With the level of iron fixed, it was a completely different game. I suddenly felt full of energy, which was something I only remembered happening decades ago. Suddenly, exercising hard became possible. (At the risk of making a pseudoscientific explanation, I suppose that iron plays an important role in the process of converting “calories in” into energy available for exercising.)
Then, after a few months of exercising hard I lost some fat, gained some muscles; people who haven’t seen me for a longer time say I have visibly changed. (I don’t even check my calories, but I started eating more fresh vegetables, so maybe it happened as a side effect.)
So my experience is that exercising more, and eating less calories (not by eating less in general, but by eating different food) worked for me, but I had to “unlock” this option by doing something else first. In other words, when “calories in, calories out” finally started working for me, the problem was already halfway solved.
You can steelman no-CICO by saying that CICO is a good physics model, but a bad control model. CICO has a simple direct link, while in the body there exists all kind of feedback loops: from fat cell to food intake, from food intake to NEAT, from exercise to NEAT, etc., all mediated by poorly-to-moderatedly understood hormones and neurological triggers.
It’s possible to have that argument and we had it multiple times in the past in discussion in which Brillyant participated. He is here saying that the position that “CICO is a bad control model” is anti-advice. He seems to consider that it’s a good enough control model to allow him to lose the weight he wants to lose.
I’m not sure on what it specifically means the word “anti-advice”, but if it’s along the line of excluding possibly useless models, then sure, it’s anti-advice but it’s still useful.
He seems to consider that it’s a good enough control model to allow him to lose the weight he wants to lose.
Yeah, but if it only works for him and a few others, and not for everyone else, can you still say that it’s a good control model? The argument from Brillyant to me seems like: any sufficiently analyzed control model is indistinguishable from a physics model. Which is true, but useless. What I want to know, and the added value of a control vs physics point of view, is which and where are the hidden knobs and levers that controls intake and consumptions. Brillyant named some, I named others. I think we can simply dissolve the question by saying:
CI = willpower + feedback from exercise + feedback from previous meals + feedback from fat cells + genetic predispositions + environmental factor + unknown unknows
CO = willpower + feedback from previous exercise + feedback from NEAT + feedback from food + genetic factors
absorption defects + unknown unknows
I’m not sure on what it specifically means the word “anti-advice”, but if it’s along the line of excluding possibly useless models, then sure, it’s anti-advice but it’s still useful.
The paragraph you wrote has the potential to make a reader believe they have less agency about weight loss and thus be less motivated to do the straightforward actions that the CICO model recommends.
While you claim to steelman you don’t provide any arguments for which you believe that isn’t the case and why believing no-CICO would be better for someone who wants to lose weight.
The paragraph you wrote has the potential to make a reader believe they have less agency about weight loss
Well, if that’s true, then we as rationalist should embrace that.
While you claim to steelman you don’t provide any arguments
Because the argument is complex and because I’m not sufficiently invested. I was suggesting a possibility in the landscape of possible counter-arguments.
why believing no-CICO would be better for someone who wants to lose weight
This is straightforward: because some people with low agency might obtain better results acting on other inputs, as per Viliam iron deficiency.
I take, “bad control model” to mean, “it explains weight in terms of cico but the phrase cico does not tell you about the hard step of making your brain go along with it (the control model)”.
I agree with that, but I would also suggest that even a bad control model is useful compared to terribly wrong models claiming to be right, for we know this model is wrong.
A while ago a good friend asked me what he could do to increase his typing skill. I didn’t give him the straightforward advice of using a type training program but I talked to him about the promises of Dvorak. He didn’t take any action, didn’t increase his typing skills or switched to Dvorak.
Adding information reduced his impulse to take action. On the same token, it’s not simply about comparing CICO against other wrong models but simply about having a person who wants to lose weight being committed to a model and doing what the model prescribes.
CICO is a good physics model, but a bad control model
CICO is a fine control model in the sense that using it will achieve the goal: controlling the CI part will get your weight down (e.g. consider fasting, that is, CI = 0). On the other hand, it’s not the most efficient control model and starving yourself thin is… difficult for people X-D
it’s not the most efficient control model and starving yourself thin is… difficult for people
I wonder if a control model which does what you want only, say,1% of the time can be defined “bad” or not. Surely it’s not totally false, since we have at least some people who claim to use it to reach the purpose. But if will is something that is employable by some to lose weight and not by others, then I think that there must be a better model which take these things into account and explains at least the effectiveness of will power for some people and not for others.
I wonder if a control model which does what you want only, say,1% of the time can be defined “bad” or not.
I see its greatest benefit as showing what is possible.
In the weight-loss arena beliefs along the lines “It is impossible for me to lose weight—I just can’t! I’ve tried a dozen of different diets and none worked!” are very common. CICO as a control model is guaranteed to work (by physics) and realizing this shifts the focus from “I can’t do anything, the universe won’t let me” to “How can I change myself to make this work”.
there must be a better model
Sure. The issue is that, I think, which model is “better” depends on the person. There is no universal answer (sorry, diet book writers), what works for one won’t work for another.
The first 2-5 weeks of big diet changes are fucking hard, but it gets easier like any habit change.
As far as I understand the literature suggest that many people succeed with the first 2-5 weeks of big diet changes only to have the yoyo-effect later in the process.
I suspect many people are doing things that are unsustainable or difficult to sustain in long run, such as:
dehydrating themselves (the easiest, but also completely stupid way to lose your first kilogram);
eating tasteless food (unsustainable unless you are willing to give up eating tasty food forever);
spending too much time on e.g. slow exercise or complicated calorie counting (when real life comes back, you will not afford doing 3 hours of yoga each day).
Which is why for myself I tried to (1) minimize the time spent exercising, which ultimately led to exercising with my own body weight at home, and (2) optimize also for the taste of the healthy food, even if it means letting an extra calorie in, as long as the outcome remains better than my previous food habits.
As a consequence, I was able to keep doing this for almost a year, even if real life keeps happening, because I like the taste of the new food (so I am not tempted to replace it with the old one), and if sometimes I only have 30 minutes of free time during the day, I can still do some meaningful exercise (as opposed to shrugging “well, no time for gym today”).
Eating tasteless food might be useful in weight loss and health. Vegetables usually have phytonutrients, which evolved to be for example insect repellents. However many of these phytonutrients have, for example, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory mechanisms in our body, Sapiens. Like Curcumin and Sulforaphane. Since IQ goes down by age, though crystallized not so much, it might be worthwhile to try and include these foods. Curcumin can pass the blood brain barrier in certain instances.
Not Relevant, Not written by Yvain (srs):
“He pointed to Absolute Infinity and told Him, including himself. why Blind-Every-thing-No-thing God, don’t you allow us to enjoy, Qualia:tetively, useful food, rather than processed food? Unless we can’t eat enough calories to satisfy our leptin-VNM-feedback system with unprocessed food, it should not be done”
Maybe AGI and CRISPR can edit the genes to enjoy “useful” food, it’s after all only food for our real purposes.
To the extent people yo-yo, I think the novelty wears off and old habits come back. You’re often dealing with months or years of new diet versus decades of old habitual diet.
I mean you notice the differences more in the first phase of a diet. You may have some New Diet Energy! that gives you a boost and helps counter the differences.
After a while, you can get accustomed to less food.
Some random barely-edited thoughts on my experience with weight loss:
In the midst of a diet where I will lose 15 lbs (15.9lb, from 185.8 lb to 169.9, to be exact) in 40 days.
I have 95% certainty I will reach this goal in the appointed time. Even if I don’t reach exactly 169.9lb, I’ll be close, so whether or not I hit the exact number is arbitrary for my purposes. (I’m losing some weight to see if it helps a lingering back injury.)
I’m just eating a disciplined diet and working out according to a consistent schedule.
My diet is simple and not starvation-y at all. Most people wouldn’t do it because it’s repetitive (I literally eat the same thing nearly everyday so I can know my calorie intake without any counting.)
My workout isn’t hard but most people wouldn’t do it because...I don’t know why, it’s just my experience that people won’t. It’s 4-5 days per week of 30-60 minutes cardio and 30-60 minutes of weight training. I have a back injury that’s limiting me, so it’s nothing terribly rigorous.
...
In my years at health clubs, talking to health-club-going people, I’ve seen all the evidence I’ll ever need to believe, basically, the Calories In / Calories Out model of weight loss is correct.
My opinion of the rationality community’s view of weight loss is that it’s bad. In fact, it is what I would consider anti-advice—the sort of thing you would introduce someone to if you wanted them to fail at weight loss. (Like in Mean Girls when Lindsey Lohan gives Rachel McAdams Swedish weight-gaining bars and tells her they are for weight loss.)
...
Some of my rough and random thoughts on managing weight:
Lean muscle mass is responsible for ~65% of individual differences in BMR.
People have significant differences in metabolism that are probably genetic predispositions. These differences can mean people who behave identically (same diet and exercise routine) will end up with very different weights.
No one should be shamed for their weight anymore than someone should be shamed for their height. (This is obvious, but needs to be said ’cuz “fat shaming” is an applause light used by the crowd who thinks anything resembling a simple CICO model for weight loss is bad and cruel.)
You shouldn’t necessarily care about weight loss and our culture is fucked up for making people feel bad about their weight.
Losing weight can be really hard.
Diet is a central component to our lives, and changes in diet make people emotional, tired, etc.
Weight is a very personal issue and body image’s importance in our culture, for better or worse, can not be overstated.
Exercising is a hard habit to adopt.
People lie. Self-reporting of diet and exercise is full of inaccuracies.
Changing your diet and exercise routine is akin to changing other habits and is subject to the same sorts of difficulties and failure modes.
The first 2-5 weeks of big diet changes are fucking hard, but it gets easier like any habit change.
Atkins, and other low carb diets, work because ’Murican diets are high calorie AND carb-centric. Cutting all carbs for a while means also cutting your total calories significantly. The published woo reasons why they work are mostly bullshit. It’s just calorie cutting while giving you a shot at forming different long-term diet habits.
There may be some foods that speed metabolism, some foods that are good to eat at certain times during the day, some food that satiate more than others for any given person, etc...
But the Eat Less/Exercise More model is tried and true.
My opinion is that it is a “motte-and-bailey” type of a model. Technically correct, but skips some of the important parts.
Things you can control directly:
amount and type of food you put in your mouth
type and amount of exercise you choose to do
whether you really start doing the exercise each day, and keep doing it as long as possible
Things you cannot control directly:
what your metabolism actually does with the food you put in your mouth
Things this model doesn’t even mention:
there are other important things about the food, not just calories
As a consequense, these things happen in real life that the model does not predict:
If you are lucky, you can actually put a lot of calories in your mouth without getting fat as a result, even if you are not exercising hard. Not sure what exactly happens, my uneducated guess is that the metabolism only takes as much calories as needed, as the rest goes to shit. (So yes, technically it is “calories out”, but it is not what people proposing this model typically mean, and you have no direct control over this, i.e. you can’t simply decide to lose weight by going to the bathroom more often.)
If you are unlucky, the “calories in” get converted into something that is somehow not easily accessible as an energy source. (Either because your metabolism is fucked up generally, or because your body is low on some important component, such as iron.) You know you should burn some calories, but at the same time you are weak as a fly, so you really can’t. (Not because “math doesn’t work”, but because the linear model ignores some parts of the reality.) But you mentioned this in the “random thoughts” part.
...however, assuming that the metabolism is working more or less correctly, the model is useful.
My recommendation would be:
Step 1 -- get checked by a doctor, whether you are low on something; start taking supplements;
Step 2 -- start exercising regularly, without worrying about the “calories in” yet, just to build the momentum;
Step 3 -- get more strategic about the food you eat.
The reason I put “step 2” before “step 3″ is because studing calories can take unlimited amounts of time, and can be used as a convenient excuse to procrastinate on exercising. I would also say that “add a lot of unprocessed vegetables in your food” is a good first approximation for healthy diet.
Other random thoughts:
don’t focus too much on “weight”—it correlates with the right thing, but is not exactly the right thing; converting 5 kg of fat into 5 kg of muscles increases your health and attractivity even if the resulting weight is the same, on the other hand dehydrating yourself decreases your weight but hurts your health;
shaming people for their metabolism (or just not having time to exercise because they e.g. have to work 2 jobs to survive) is bad; but enforcing a norm of tabooing information about healthy lifestyle is in my eyes even worse… essentially, because people doing the former are at least usually recognized as assholes, while people doing the latter can pretend noble intentions while in fact they contribute to avoidable premature deaths;
I believe that “eating a lot of unprocessed vegetables” is the essence of healthy diet, and the rest is mostly role-playing (i.e. you can eat “Mediterranean diet” and imagine being an exotic Italian, or eat a “paleo diet” and imagine being a prehistorical warrior, but the outcome is the same for the same reasons, regardless of your aesthetical preferences)
Agreed. Some people have significantly higher metabolisms.
Agreed. I’m not talking about nutrition, just weight loss.
I mentioned the nutrition because that used to be my problem in the past.
I had low level of iron, so the answer “just exercise and burn some calories” was quite useless to me—I was barely able to wake up in the morning. Repeatedly I tried to exercise regularly for a few weeks, but the outcome was always pathetic: after a few moves I was exhausted, and there was no visible long-term progress. Of course, after doing a difficult thing with zero benefits, after a few weeks my motivation was gone.
Meta problem was that “checking my levels of iron” wasn’t even on the list of things I was thinking about, when I was thinking about how to get rid of some fat. (People around me assumed the opposite causal model: I have a problem with energy, because I am not doing any sport or exercise, duh!) It happened quite randomly; a friend of mine was reading somewhere on internet a list of symptoms of iron deficiency and mentioned it to me, and I was like “huh, sometimes I have similar symptoms, too”. Yet it took a few years until once I asked a doctor to measure my iron level. Turned out, it was at the lowest end of the “healthy” interval… so, according to the doctor, not worth mentioning unless I ask explicitly, because I am still technically healthy. I guess being technically healthy is important from the official medicine point of view, but I would rather get closer towards the optimal health, so… I bought some iron supplements, and...
With the level of iron fixed, it was a completely different game. I suddenly felt full of energy, which was something I only remembered happening decades ago. Suddenly, exercising hard became possible. (At the risk of making a pseudoscientific explanation, I suppose that iron plays an important role in the process of converting “calories in” into energy available for exercising.)
Then, after a few months of exercising hard I lost some fat, gained some muscles; people who haven’t seen me for a longer time say I have visibly changed. (I don’t even check my calories, but I started eating more fresh vegetables, so maybe it happened as a side effect.)
So my experience is that exercising more, and eating less calories (not by eating less in general, but by eating different food) worked for me, but I had to “unlock” this option by doing something else first. In other words, when “calories in, calories out” finally started working for me, the problem was already halfway solved.
Good luck with your weight loss!
You can steelman no-CICO by saying that CICO is a good physics model, but a bad control model. CICO has a simple direct link, while in the body there exists all kind of feedback loops: from fat cell to food intake, from food intake to NEAT, from exercise to NEAT, etc., all mediated by poorly-to-moderatedly understood hormones and neurological triggers.
It’s possible to have that argument and we had it multiple times in the past in discussion in which Brillyant participated. He is here saying that the position that “CICO is a bad control model” is anti-advice. He seems to consider that it’s a good enough control model to allow him to lose the weight he wants to lose.
I’m not sure on what it specifically means the word “anti-advice”, but if it’s along the line of excluding possibly useless models, then sure, it’s anti-advice but it’s still useful.
Yeah, but if it only works for him and a few others, and not for everyone else, can you still say that it’s a good control model?
The argument from Brillyant to me seems like: any sufficiently analyzed control model is indistinguishable from a physics model. Which is true, but useless. What I want to know, and the added value of a control vs physics point of view, is which and where are the hidden knobs and levers that controls intake and consumptions.
Brillyant named some, I named others.
I think we can simply dissolve the question by saying:
CI = willpower + feedback from exercise + feedback from previous meals + feedback from fat cells + genetic predispositions + environmental factor + unknown unknows
CO = willpower + feedback from previous exercise + feedback from NEAT + feedback from food + genetic factors absorption defects + unknown unknows
CI—CO = weight gains.
Is this better?
The paragraph you wrote has the potential to make a reader believe they have less agency about weight loss and thus be less motivated to do the straightforward actions that the CICO model recommends.
While you claim to steelman you don’t provide any arguments for which you believe that isn’t the case and why believing no-CICO would be better for someone who wants to lose weight.
Well, if that’s true, then we as rationalist should embrace that.
Because the argument is complex and because I’m not sufficiently invested. I was suggesting a possibility in the landscape of possible counter-arguments.
This is straightforward: because some people with low agency might obtain better results acting on other inputs, as per Viliam iron deficiency.
I take, “bad control model” to mean, “it explains weight in terms of cico but the phrase cico does not tell you about the hard step of making your brain go along with it (the control model)”.
I agree with that, but I would also suggest that even a bad control model is useful compared to terribly wrong models claiming to be right, for we know this model is wrong.
A while ago a good friend asked me what he could do to increase his typing skill. I didn’t give him the straightforward advice of using a type training program but I talked to him about the promises of Dvorak. He didn’t take any action, didn’t increase his typing skills or switched to Dvorak.
Adding information reduced his impulse to take action. On the same token, it’s not simply about comparing CICO against other wrong models but simply about having a person who wants to lose weight being committed to a model and doing what the model prescribes.
CICO is a fine control model in the sense that using it will achieve the goal: controlling the CI part will get your weight down (e.g. consider fasting, that is, CI = 0). On the other hand, it’s not the most efficient control model and starving yourself thin is… difficult for people X-D
I wonder if a control model which does what you want only, say,1% of the time can be defined “bad” or not. Surely it’s not totally false, since we have at least some people who claim to use it to reach the purpose. But if will is something that is employable by some to lose weight and not by others, then I think that there must be a better model which take these things into account and explains at least the effectiveness of will power for some people and not for others.
I see its greatest benefit as showing what is possible.
In the weight-loss arena beliefs along the lines “It is impossible for me to lose weight—I just can’t! I’ve tried a dozen of different diets and none worked!” are very common. CICO as a control model is guaranteed to work (by physics) and realizing this shifts the focus from “I can’t do anything, the universe won’t let me” to “How can I change myself to make this work”.
Sure. The issue is that, I think, which model is “better” depends on the person. There is no universal answer (sorry, diet book writers), what works for one won’t work for another.
Step 1. Optimal rationality
Step 2. Easy weight loss with the cico model
Easy peasy.
My point exactly
As far as I understand the literature suggest that many people succeed with the first 2-5 weeks of big diet changes only to have the yoyo-effect later in the process.
I suspect many people are doing things that are unsustainable or difficult to sustain in long run, such as:
dehydrating themselves (the easiest, but also completely stupid way to lose your first kilogram);
eating tasteless food (unsustainable unless you are willing to give up eating tasty food forever);
spending too much time on e.g. slow exercise or complicated calorie counting (when real life comes back, you will not afford doing 3 hours of yoga each day).
Which is why for myself I tried to (1) minimize the time spent exercising, which ultimately led to exercising with my own body weight at home, and (2) optimize also for the taste of the healthy food, even if it means letting an extra calorie in, as long as the outcome remains better than my previous food habits.
As a consequence, I was able to keep doing this for almost a year, even if real life keeps happening, because I like the taste of the new food (so I am not tempted to replace it with the old one), and if sometimes I only have 30 minutes of free time during the day, I can still do some meaningful exercise (as opposed to shrugging “well, no time for gym today”).
Eating tasteless food might be useful in weight loss and health. Vegetables usually have phytonutrients, which evolved to be for example insect repellents. However many of these phytonutrients have, for example, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory mechanisms in our body, Sapiens. Like Curcumin and Sulforaphane. Since IQ goes down by age, though crystallized not so much, it might be worthwhile to try and include these foods. Curcumin can pass the blood brain barrier in certain instances.
You’ve read this? It’s long, but if you CTRL+F for “taste” you’ll see some obvious writings. http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry-brain/
Not Relevant, Not written by Yvain (srs): “He pointed to Absolute Infinity and told Him, including himself. why Blind-Every-thing-No-thing God, don’t you allow us to enjoy, Qualia:tetively, useful food, rather than processed food? Unless we can’t eat enough calories to satisfy our leptin-VNM-feedback system with unprocessed food, it should not be done”
Maybe AGI and CRISPR can edit the genes to enjoy “useful” food, it’s after all only food for our real purposes.
.
To the extent people yo-yo, I think the novelty wears off and old habits come back. You’re often dealing with months or years of new diet versus decades of old habitual diet.
I mean you notice the differences more in the first phase of a diet. You may have some New Diet Energy! that gives you a boost and helps counter the differences.
After a while, you can get accustomed to less food.
Good luck on your weight loss! :-)